A sustainable circular economy dive

The fishing and aquaculture sectors are significant contributors to marine plastic pollution. This chapter highlights the urgent need for policies to promote these sectors’ transition to a sustainable circular economy (SCE) to tackle marine plastic pollution. Using a content analysis approach, it evaluates ten key SCE principles encompassing ecological and social sustainability. The findings reveal that EU policies continue to prioritise waste management and recycling over upstream interventions such as reducing material consumption and redesigning production models. While newer policies, like the Single-Use Plastics Directive, promote shifts in business models and consumer behaviour, they often lack an integrated approach, leading to unintended environmental and social consequences. Social sustainability remains a key gap, with limited attention to labour conditions, gender equality, and resource equity. Non-legally binding policy documents tend to address broader sustainability concerns more frequently than laws, with some exceptions, such as the EU Taxonomy Regulation and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). By assessing existing policy frameworks, this research provides insights into opportunities for strengthening regulatory approaches to advance sustainability in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors.